This month, TSJ spoke to Andrews Marbles and Tiles, a UK tile supplier and contractor headquartered in Leeds, with branches in Stockport and Glasgow. A. Andrews was founded in 1886 by Arthur Andrews a journeyman who by 1895 had been appointed an agent for tile manufacturers Craven Dunhill & Co Ltd. While the Andrews family is no longer connected with the company, the business retains a “family feel,” says managing director David Clough, with many longstanding members of staff who have been with Andrews for the majority of their working lives.
“We employ multiple generations of several different families across our workface and 25 year-long service awards are presented on a regular basis,” David Clough explains. “The longevity of our workforce is one of the company’s strengths, as we have traditional apprentice trained craftsman who have been directly employed by Andrews for decades and this brings a level of quality and skill unmatched by others in the industry.”
A solid foundation
The company’s traditional area of expertise is terrazzo contracting. For many years, Andrews has been a mainstay UK installer of terrazzo floors, particularly for national supermarkets such as Aldi, one of the company’s biggest customers.
It also offers a ceramic tile contracting service and has completed many large projects particularly swimming pools such as the Altrincham Leisure Pool, Spen Valley Pool and Five Towns Leisure Complex in Pontefract, as well as other large projects such as Westfield White City and Bradford, Victoria Gate Leeds and Barton Square in Manchester. David Clough adds: “We have close links with Leeds College of Building and have a number of apprentices working with our fixers teams at the moment who also attend college and are working towards their NVQ qualification.”
To complement the company’s terrazzo tiling services, it maintains an in-house precast shop where it can manufacture bespoke polished pieces of terrazzo such as matching skirtings, treads/risers, column bases etc from the same chippings as used in the floor.
“The possibilities with terrazzo are endless,” says David Clough, “and clients can choose their own mix of chippings and aggregates and even introduce glass or recycled elements such as ceramics or pottery to create their own unique mix.” One of the company’s large recent contracts was the manufacture of terrazzo panels for the Dorchester Hotel in London.
Other services offered by the company include granite cladding, with projects ranging from columns and soffits on high street shopfronts to the Royal Armouries building in Leeds which was fully clad by the Andrews’ mechanical fixing team externally while its ceramic tilers laid floors and staircases internally.
Diversification
In response to the volatile market conditions of the past few years, Andrews is adjusting its service offering to be less heavily focused on contracting. Clough explains: “The balance of the business is changing as our sales outlets grow and the move towards a 50/50 split between contracting and sales will provide a more stable business model moving forward.”
Andrews has always provided a trade counter and public showroom service from its premises on Meanwood Road in Leeds but in recent years this has been expanded with additional units opened in Glasglow, Bredbury and Leeds. In 2024, the company also opened new branches in Irlam and Wakefield.
As the company has opened more trade counters and public showrooms, the volume of goods in and sales has escalated very quickly, says David Clough, and to deal with this it has recently installed a new modern EPOS system. This system allows the company to keep a tight grip on stock control, invoicing and debt control and is “invaluable” as Andrews looks to expand again over the next few years.
Case studies
“One recent contract we are especially proud of,” David Clough recalls, “is the Barton Square project at The Trafford Centre in Manchester completed in 2020.” For this large-scale installation, Andrews supplied and installed over 10,000sqm of granite floor tiles including a large feature floor in the central fountain areas. The company also stripped and refitted columns, refurbished the water feature and supplied and installed porcelain tiles to toilets and back of house areas.
In 2010, the company’s supply of terrazzo tiles came under threat, as Pilkington Tiles went into liquidation and Quiligotti Tiles, which was the terrazzo tile producing arm of their business, was threatened with closure. This was the only UK terrazzo tile producing factory at the time, and without it Andrews would have been forced to rely on imported tiles for its contracting projects. To safeguard the UK supply of terrazzo tiles, David Clough explains, the company stepped in along with the existing Quiligotti directors to purchase the factory and save it from closure. “This means that we can work closely with the factory on upcoming projects and ensure quality standards and stock levels are maintained and terrazzo is promoted moving forward,” he adds.
Challenges and looking ahead
Although the company has worked to expand its offering while continuing to provide a high-quality contracting service, that doesn’t mean it has nothing to worry about. David Clough explains: “Looking at 2025, the rise in Employers National Insurance contributions is a significant extra cost that will impact us and others in the tiling industry. Despite this we intend to push on with the further diversification of the business away from its previous reliance on contracting, and the continued growth of our various trade counters together with our online sales platform The Tilers Hub is key to a successful year.”
Andrews has also recently carried out work around reducing the carbon footprint of its terrazzo in response to specifier demand, including sourcing UK aggregates and low carbon cements to use in its tiles.
As for its next steps, Andrews is currently expanding its manufacturing capability to improve its terrazzo offering even further. David Clough explains: “We are particularly excited about the installation of a new 20mm slimline press at our terrazzo tile factory Quiligotti in Manchester. This is the only UK manufacturer of terrazzo tiles and the new 20mm pre-finished product means large format terrazzo can now be laid in the same way as porcelain or ceramics tiles. This opens up the product to new high-end markets and together with our partners at Solus has led to the development of Spolia – terrazzo tiles made from the recycled crushed facades of old buildings.”
www.andrews-tiles.co.uk
